Holding Back Young Students: Is Program a Gift or a Stigma?

[flashl]

SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. — With the increasing emphasis on standardized testing over the past decade, large urban school systems have famously declared an end to so-called social promotion among youngsters lacking basic skills. Last year, New York flunked 6 percent of its first graders, and Chicago 7.7 percent.

Now the 8,400-student East Ramapo school district in this verdant stretch west of the Palisades is going further, having revived a controversial retention practice widely denounced in the 1980s to not only hold back nearly 12 percent of its first graders this spring but to segregate them in a separate classroom come fall.

The special classes, which are limited to 15 students and follow a pared-down curriculum of reading, writing and arithmetic, are called the Gift of Time and come with extras like tutoring and field trips to a local farm.

School officials say that adding resources — about $2,000 per child, in a district whose average general-education spending per pupil is about $13,000 — and tailoring the lessons for low-performers works. Nearly 80 percent of the 54 first graders and 47 second graders in Gift of Time classes this past school year now read at grade level (although they are, of course, a year behind their age group); at least 30 percent of the younger group and 11 percent of the older group are above grade level, according to district evaluations performed last month.

NY Times

[alphafemale]

1. It probably is a good idea to give these kids the support they need.

There's certainly not as much social stigma at that age, and it sounds like there is a real focus to catch the kids up with their peers.

Social promotion for kids who haven't mastered the basics can cause them to realize they are hopelessly overwhelmed by 4th grade or even younger. Then they give up.

[nykym]

2. It does work

we held our daughter back in first grade because she just wasn't getting it, it was also because the teacher was not very good - since transfered to kindergarten. We had to go to the superintendent to have her held back, there was a budget issue that had to do with the number of students graduated that year. The superintendent was very surprised because he usually gets parents screaming about their kids getting left back. She was diagnosed with a learning disability and the school set up a program for her in her regular classes. To make a long story short she has been on the honor roll for the last 4 years and was just inducted into the junior honor society and has been taken of the learning disability. She is just a great kid. I am glad we did it.

[LWolf]

3. Research doesn't support retention.

It just doesn't. I'd suggest that perhaps a small, narrowly focused class size could be offered to students who aren't keeping up, without the grade retention.

Even better, why not make small class size and more individualized curriculum and instruction the norm for all students, thus drastically cutting down the number of students who fall behind?

Social promotion works because research consistently shows that retention does not work. Just moving them on doesn't work, either. An investment in restructuring the system to provide more opportunity for all, or, if you can't fund that, more opportunity for those who aren't surviving the american factory school system, would work.